The Other Cases

Introduction

Now that we've studied all of the features of the Sanskrit noun — case, number, person, and gender — let's finish up our study of the -a nouns with a summary of the four remaining noun cases.

Since we are covering four cases in one lesson, it's unwise to study all features of them, especially because these cases are more complex than the ones we've studied so far. For that reason, we will study only one primary meaning for each case. Moreover, we will skip the sandhi rules that apply to these cases. After Starting Out, we will study the Sanskrit noun cases in more detail.

The four cases

Roughly, the meanings of the five cases are as follows:

Case

English version

case 3

"with"

case 4

"for"

case 5

"from"

case 7

"in"

Examples

• गजेन गच्छामि

  gajena gacchāmi

  I go with the elephant.

• वीरो नराय गच्छति

  vīro narāya gacchati

  The hero speaks for the man.

• नरो वनात् चरति

  naro vanāt carati

  The man walks from the forest.

• वने लभे फलानि

  vane labhe phalāni

  I obtain fruits in the forest.

Inflection

For now, let's study only the singular versions of these cases:

The singular forms of the eight cases are all very common, and they are worth memorizing well. But the other endings are much less common, so we can ignore them for the time being.